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WASHINGTON, June 24 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump canceled his plan to sign a bipartisan affordable housing bill on Wednesday in an effort to pressure his fellow Republicans to pass a long-stalled package of U.S. national voting restrictions known as the SAVE America Act.
Trump has said he will join Senate Republicans at a closed-door lunch on Wednesday afternoon to lobby them to pass the voting measure called the SAVE America Act, his top legislative priority. The act would require a photo ID to vote in federal elections and proof of U.S. citizenship to register, while compelling states to turn over their voter registration rolls to the federal government.
“Today’s Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency,” Trump wrote in a social media post. Some Republicans indicated it may be a largely symbolic gesture: it can become law anyway if the president has not signed within 10 days, and lawmakers believe they have enough votes to overcome a presidential veto.
But Trump’s determination may not be enough. Although Republicans control 53 of the Senate’s 100 seats, they lack the 60 votes needed to meet the chamber’s filibuster threshold for most bills, which accounts for five failed votes on the Act or its provisions since mid-March.
Republicans say they also do not have enough votes to meet Trump’s repeated demands to eliminate the filibuster and pass the bill with a simple majority.
“Those are just hard realities. And I think people at some point have to come to grips with that,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters in what may be a preview of his conference’s message to Trump.
Senate Republicans have also rejected Trump’s call for other hardball tactics, such as attaching the SAVE America Act to must-pass legislation or firing a Senate official who blocked it from a recent spending package.
Backers of the bill say they should not abandon efforts to pass a top Trump priority.
“For every bill up here, when it starts, there’s not enough votes,” said Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida, a supporter of the legislation who invited Trump to Wednesday’s meeting. “We’re going to have a nice conversation to see if we can figure out how to get this across the finish line.”
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